that is demonstrated we would say, pull back, that is not what we are after.

What we are talking about is attempting to overcome this tendency to merely run through a few mental accommodations, to discharge them and say that that is all we can do.

We would like to see some real experimenting and prove it.

Mr. NIXON: I would like to add a word there. We have cases, for instance, where an employer will allow their employees to sponsor a softball team or go out and practice.

That is no problem; take off an hour early. The Sabbatarian comes along and says that it is my Sabbath and I need a half an hour off. The company says sorry; that's a different category. We can't do a thing about it for you.

And it is this kind of attitude, we hope that the EEOC can encourage some of these employers to say where are your priorities; at least they should be equal to the other.

Commissioner LEACH: You suggest that perhaps recreation has taken a pre-eminent position to religion at times.

Mr. NIXON: Yes.

Chair NORTON: One question for Mr. Adams.

It is very troubling to hear your testimony that Hardison hit like something like an earthquake. I suggest that perhaps employers were accommodating under some duress in the first place and may have not simply misinterpreted Hardison, but have been looking for an excuse not to have to accommodate.

I wonder if in your experience . . . is in order to get accommodation in the first place you have to go in, in a large number of cases, or have you found in the past that employers tend to accommodate and only the recalcitrant ones stand out in this regard?

Mr. ADAMS: Oh, I think that really boils into two classifications. There are a lot of employers who, by their very nature, their desire to get along, their ability to handle personnel problems, and so on, and who do accommodate and have accommodated and so on.

That has been going on, but there are a number of them who have a rather built-in attitude that nobody is going to tell me how to run my business, whether it is EEOC, or a Sabbatarian, or otherwise and there is an automatic barrier comes up which the Civil Rights Law, the EEOC and so on have helped to calm down and keep under control to a certain extent. And I think that it is this latter case which may be the smaller group by far, but nevertheless, it is sufficient enough and it is large enough to make a real impact upon our membership.

Chair NORTON: Is there any trend here? For example, the post

Hardison reaction, did it tend to be sectional, in some parts of the country, rather than others?

Mr. ADAMS: Oh, I would like to ask Mr. Engen that question because he is really dealing specifically with these problems.

Mr. ENGEN: When this decision was first announced we wanted to find that very question out, and we sent to our pastors across the country questionnaires and asked them to be distributed in church to find out who was having problems. And our distribution, this is a result of that questionnaire. The distribution is very largely comparable to the concentration of our membership across the country.

I don't believe that any one section stood out any more than any other section, but it was in proportion to the places where we have a sufficient number of people.

Chair NORTON: Is your membership sectional in any way?

Mr. ENGEN: There are some parts of the country where we have much greater membership than other parts.

Chair NORTON: What are those parts?

Mr. ENGEN: On the West Coast, the Southern California area, there is a very large membership there. In the Mid-West, around the Chicago area, there is quite a large concentration of our members there, primarily because we have certain institutions that are located in some of these places.

There is one illustration of what Mr. Adams was saying that took place from Florida, where a company that had been accommodating Seventh Day Adventist employees was advised by the legal counsel for the company that now, because of the Hardison decision, the accommodations that they had been making in the past, may not-you may be liable if you continue to make those accommodations any longer. And you better reconsider the fact that you are making these accommodations in the light of the legal exposure that you may be subject to now. Chair NORTON: Commissioners Leach and Walsh, any further questions?

Commissioner LEACH: Can you tie the experience as recounted throughout the nation by your membership, and in the surveys you've taken, to charges, actual charges, that have been filed since Hardison in our offices?

Mr. ENGEN: Since the Hardison decision came I would say that the charges have dropped because a number of the points made in the Hardison decision seemed to eliminate the value of placing the charges, if it is a contractural seniority problem with a contract there.

A number of people have just said well there is no use in filing a charge, and so it has had a chilling effect, I would think, on the charges that have actually been filed since that time.

We've been reviewing, as people contact our office and as they ask us for advice, we have been reviewing the circumstances much more clearly since the Hardison decision.

Chair NORTON: Thank you very much, Mr. Adams, and I want to thank your colleagues as well. This has been most helpful testimony. Thank you for taking the time to come here.

I would like to call next on an old colleague from city government and friend, Mr. Frank Arricale, Executive Director of Personnel for the New York City Board of Education.

Mr. ARRICALE: Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity, and it is a very happy opportunity because I am both happy and proud to have been part of administrations of the City government and now of the New York City Board of Education that has had as its standard operating procedure the accommodation for Sabbatarians.

And in fact if individual supervisors were reluctant, moral suasion by policy makers in the Wagner and Lindsay administrations and by the Board of Education's top staff have always helped us to implement what I think is the Sorax decision of the Supreme Court said very well, that when we attempt to accommodate the beliefs of our citizens we are implementing the highest traditions of our own government.

And also, I think this accommodation that both the City Government and the Board of Education have been involved in is a very practical attempt to help us to work out the concept of pluralism, to which we are now beginning to give at least lip service, after we have gone through the homogeneous melting pot mythology, because pluralism is difficult.

How do you have the coexistence of equally validated lifestyles, value systems and so on; how does that work out in the practical order? In the Sabbath accommodation built into personnel practices in the largest municipality in the world and in the largest school system in the world.

I think helps us to work out this philosophy in a very practical way, and it also is teaching our youngsters in the school system the meaning of pluralism.

It is one thing for us to give lip service to pluralism in a curriculum; it is another thing in our very working days, in our over 100,000 employees, 60,000 pedagogues and about 40,000 people who work anywhere from being architects, school lunch room workers, paraprofessionals, and so on, to have that. And each time we make that accommodation in the sight of youngsters, we are giving them another lesson in how to work in a pluralistic society.

So I am indeed grateful, Mrs. Norton and Commissioners, for the opportunity to say that it has worked, not only at the Board of Education where I have been the last five years, but it worked also in

City Government when I was Commissioner, when I was on lower levels of Government for 15 years under many administrations, particularly in the Wagner and Lindsay administrations.

And it has developed also, we have had a side effect of this. This policy of accommodation has helped workers respect each other's differences. It has helped workers to appreciate each other's differences, and it helped to develop a very healthy and happy personnel atmosphere.

What I would like to see because I worry that there may be a time that there rises a Pharoah that knows not Joseph, and therefore I think we have to be ready for that possibility and I would like to have accommodation built into an obligation of public government, that they must make every opportunity to accommodate.

And I take as my guideline a recent State Court ruling, Steel v. Valhalla in another area, in terms of teachers who were laid off, and teachers who had particular kinds of certifications, the court ruled there, our New York State Court of Appeals ruled, that school districts had to take time out to rearrange schedules in order to allow the more senior teachers programs that would enable them to stay on salary.

So I think following that same kind of mandate I would like to see what has now been a standard operating procedure, policy, practice in the City of New York, in the Board of Education. I would like to see that somehow written into regulation, the mandate to accommodate, the mandate to take all reasonable means to accommodate our pluralistic personnel as a protection for the future, in case we don't have as liberal, in case we don't have as accommodating, in case we don't have as sensitive an administration as we've had in the past. In order to protect us also against suits that people who object to accommodation may sometimes level at us; not sue us, but at least grievances; why have you made these accommodations that perhaps hurt us, and so on so that while testifying to a very happy, successful program of accommodation in New York City, I would also like to call on our colleagues in the Federal Government perhaps to bring about some kind of gentle mandate that would both insure this for the future and also protect us against grievances of those who oppose this, which at the present time is merely, you know, a practice, rather than any kind of legal stricture. Chair NORTON: Thank you very much, Frank Arricale.

I have one question to ask you whether or not the decentralization of the schools has had any effect upon the overall policy of the New York City Board of Education with respect to accommodation?

Mr. ARRICALE: Every single one of the 32 districts has been as accommodating as the central board, and there has been absolutely no difference in any of the districts in this policy of accommodation.

There is a great sensitivity there.

Chair NORTON: Commissioner Leach and Commissioner Walsh.

Commissioner LEACH: I have a sister-in-law who is a member of the World Wide Church of God in the Southwest. They have a celebration in the fall which requires her and her colleagues, fellow-worshipers to be away for a short time, a week or ten days or so.

And I know that she has told me about teachers, school teachers who are members of this faith, who must confront school systems in that part of the country, which suggests that this would be very disruptive in the fall to the school year and the continuity of the classroom and so forth.

Have you confronted this experience in your 32 districts?

Mr. ARRICALE: No, we have not, but if I were to be confronted with that, my answer would be an answer that is similar to the gentleman before. We have made many accommodations to professional associations.

Teachers leave us for days at a time to attend the association of curriculum development, the Association of School Administrators. In fact, there isn't a week passes by that there isn't some association having a convention or a meeting, or a subcommittee meeting somewhere, and in order for us to contribute to the general professional development of our staff and of the profession in general, we make those accommodations to our staff.

If we are willing to do that on a professional level, I certainly think we should do that on the level of personal freedom.

The First Amendment, you know, talks about free exercise very clearly, and I think that perhaps in the next decade we're going to have to explore the tension between "no establishment" and "free exercise”. I think we've gone quite far on "no establishment". I think now we have to start building up a whole body of case law on "free exercise". Chair NORTON: Thank you very much.

Mr. ARRICALE: Thank you.

Chair NORTON: We call now as our next witness, Rabbi Menachem Lubinsky, Director, Project Cope, Agudath Israel of America.

RABBI LUBINSKY: Good afternoon, Madame Chair and members of the Commission. I am Rabbi Menachem Lubinsky, the Director of Project COPE, Career Opportunities and Preparation for Employment, a job training and career guidance agency.

COPE is a division of Agudath Israel of America, a 56 year old Orthodox Jewish movement with chapters throughout the nation which is also affiliated with the worldwide Agudath Israel movement which was founded in 1912. I also happen to serve on the New York City Manpower Planning Council.